on October 25th, 2010

25

Oct

I was puzzled the other night when a brightly illuminated billboard promoting pants over the boulevard drew my attention. It read: “All asses were not created equal.”

True enough! All of a sudden, as I was so far relatively satisfied with that part of my anatomy, I felt uncomfortable in my mind to have ignored this important issue and its intricacy. I did not feel guilty, though, because no trace of the lower back problem could be found in my favorite readings, that of Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin. Reflecting on the human condition, and on the research of equality among men, they were – it seems – mostly concerned by the inequality of the heads and by the difference it could make at the end of the day if nothing was done to take care of natural or acquired imbalances.

Obviously, there is a lack of attention for the condition of our bottom part. But what to do? Send a petition to UNESCO? It’s a stodgy bureaucracy. To the Obama administration? The impending elections take up all of their time.

I was about to begin to found an ass-sociation to lobby Congress, when I fell on other devastating news. Scientists from Switzerland and from Stanford University proclaim that, “All red wines are not created equal.” Oh, my…. Explanation: red wine is good for us because it contains polyphenols like resveratrol that protect us from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and maybe even obesity. But the trick is that some wines contain much more of the good stuff than others, up to twenty times more. So, how can we know? A drop of wine on a test strip inserted in a new gadget marketed by a Swiss firm displays the quantity of polyphenols in the sample.

If you don’t possess the gizmo and have no clue as to the quality of the elixir, I would not recommend covering yourself and guaranteeing you have the right quantity by drinking twenty glasses of wine. This should be attempted by those with stainless steel stomachs.

Sometimes, I wonder if equality belongs to this world.

PS: Although my house is filled with screw openers, buckets, tasting cups, thermometers, etc., I might buy the Swiss device. Longevity has no price.